New Ulm weekly review., 1887-02-16
He1pmeets or Companions?
From the Philadelphia Times


The daily papers are constantly
sprinkled and stained with records Of
quarrels between husbands and wives
Divorces are as frequent as they are
destructive Of every finer domestic feel
ing and >--oasing to every higher quail
ty of human character. And the cases
of domestic tragedy that get into the
papers are as units compared with the
unwritten thousands of cases that ache
themselves out to some sanity and chari-
ty or into silent graves. Plainly the
remedy for all this is neither multiplied
divorces, which simply multiply the
wrongs, nor in bachelorhood and pros
titution, nor in polygamy, Perhaps
the reform, if any is possible. must
come from a different view of the mar
riage relationship, from a renewed and
higher conception Of domestic duties,
OF a sort of swinging ba ok to the old
Biblical conception Of things.
No man in his senses will war against
modern education. No man who has
tasted the advantages of knowledge
will throw anything, even hint in the
way OF others who are seeking the same
possession. But that modern educa-
tion in it's purely narrow secularism,
with its eye on individual rights rather
than on individual duties to a higher
law in the first instance, has invaded
the sanctity Of marriage and made by.
word OF marriage VOWS few people will
deny who have watched the business in
communities where the secular ideas
have had most perfect sway.
The old notion of wife was that she
was helpmeet. The modern terma-
giant idea is that she must be a compan-
ion or nothing. There is more differ
ence in these two conceptions than at
first sight appears. The secular per.
son says certainly there is. Your Bible
idea was that woman should be drudge
to her lordly husband. So the secular
person gets in his abuse of the Bible
and at the same time adds to his own
poor blindness. Plainly, the Scriptur-
al idea of wife, as a helpmeet, was
that in all conceivable ways and espec.
tally in the temper and tone Of her life
she should be a joy and an inspiration
to her husband, who, as shepard or
warrior or mechanic OF priest, was
recognized as the main burden bearer
in the outside world.
Because to-day there are perhaps
larger number of women who take up
these outside burdens and carry them
that does not alter the essential, pre-
vailing and eternal order of things.
Nor does it follow that women the world
over are any more Cited f2y co9psnioGs
to men in the Sense of sharing their act
ual worlds work than they were of old
Mrs. Carlyle wanted to be companion
to her Thomas, and so made his life
miserable and her own. If, instead of
prating about companionship and stitch
ing his boots for spite, she had wrought
the hidden charm of her nature into his
weary hours Mr.. Froude would have
had different story to tell. George
Lewis and George Eliot tried the
companionship theory and sunk the
best of both their lives in the business.
So did John Stuart Mill and his Mrs.
Taylor. These are noted examples that
little people of chrome culture are aping
and SO setting burning examples for a
giddy world. Perhaps there is dis
tinction worth considering in the con-
trast of this old Bible and this modern
idea of marriage, and the young people,
at all events, may as well look at the
vision through both glasses for awhile.